St. Landry democrat., 1887-06-18

from $4,000 to $3.50, 000-stand as evil
dences of the material prosperity of our
people. I can show you within a half
hours drive of the City Hall hundreds and
hundreds of what in other days would
have been called mansions, in which live
men of moderate means, to whom the ex-
penditure of from $12, 900 to $50,000is an
annual fact, while, on Madison and Fifth
avenues, are huge piles of granite, and of
other stone, in which live families whose
annual expenditure runs from $4,000
to $4,000 a year.
The goats and the COWS and the stray
horses feed near the shant1es built upon
the rocks in the rear of these magnificent
houses. Day after day month after month,
the busy piercing of the steam drill and
the explosion of the virile powder knock
away these handiworks of nature, huge
beds of rock, acres of stone, mountains
of granite, on which goats disport,
wherein are built the shanties of the
laborer, and the one-storied stables Of
the "Orange-county milkmen." The
march of civilization, little by little,
pushes away the shanties, drives away
the goats, upheaves the rocks and plants
thereon, these overgrowths of a most
peculiar, though a most prosperous
people. Our rich men are not educated
men.
Their faculties are sharpened in the
line OF money-getting; their cardinal
virtue seems to be housekeeping. The
elder generations, whose wit and tact and
brute force made and heaped and accu-
mulated the fortune, finds its pleasure to
an amazing extent in the possession OF
expensive horses. | can name a dozen
triple, quintuple m~illionaires who, after
a few hours devoted to business down
town, resort Immediately to their stables,
where, with jockeys and stable boys and
visitors, they discuss the points of their
horses and bet upon their speed.
Every afternoon the boulevard leading
from the park toward Manhattanville is
literally crowded with the owners of
fast-fying horses, eager to witness the
trials of speedfurnished for their delecta-
ton by the Vanderbilts, the Works, the
Deweys and other sports for which New
York of to- day is noted. The boulevard
is lined with road-houses, where a cigar
and a bottle are the average entertain
ment furnished to the man, while his
horse takes his sponge at the post. For
tunes are won and lost every pleasant
afternoon by these men of money, and
their example, pernicious and enervat-
ing, has aiken a firm grip upon the second
generation, which adds to the follies of
the elder the vices more peculiar to
people of their age. Utterly selfish, alb
solutely ignoring the convenience and
comfort of others, these drivers push
their horses to their utmost speed and
would no more think of holding up or
turning aside to avoid a collision or a
calamity to others than of eating the
dust of the road for their dinner. In
their mind a check is ample compensa-
ton to any victim, however old or of
whichever sex. And this spirit of brutal
seltishness which they evince every
afternoon in this particular spot is a fair
type and index of their feeling in all
other relations of life toward their fell
low-men. Like begets like, and if these
men continue, as they certainly will,
their course of personal qualification at
the expense of their fellow-citizens, liter
ally reckless of anybody's veal but their
own, the day of reckoning as surely
will come.
/ I'm no alarmist.
1don't care the turn of my hand how
many millions Mr.. Vanderbilt has, or Mr..
Gould, or Mr.. Anybodyelse, but ommon
sense teaches me that the excuses which
led to the uprisings in France, and the
mushroom growth of the r.ch men of
California, which resulted in the exodus
of nineteen-twentieths of the rich men
from that State, are but the presage and
precursor of some upheaval, of some
CONFUSION, on this beautiful Man
haitian leland which is ourcod TODAY nv
the excessive prosperity of the n class
and by the terrible restitution of the
other. Two and two make four all the
world round, and New York city will not
prove an exception.
Meantime let us enjoy the glories of the
weather, which belongs as truly to the
as to the rich, and can, thank
.leaven, never be taken away.
HOWARD.